I have been playing a game a Palermo to put the Sword of Islam DLC through its paces, and i am pleased with it so far. I would definitely say it is worth some money. I may not quite be ready to say worth $9.99, but i have yet to see all it offers.

Palermo is not a wonderful place to start as a Shia ruler. You are basically surrounded by rulers with sweet, sweet Holy War Casus Belli on you, and they aren’t shy. You of course have the same options to use against them, but unless you have managed your alliances wisely (cough Egypt cough four wives cough), you aren’t going to have the necessary muscle to fight off the extra six countries who come to their defense.

But you don’t have to sit and wait for you Vizier to fabricate claims either. Continue reading »

Hello, visitors. I have a request for you today. I have been trying to figure out exactly how Attached Armies work so i could put up a page about them, but in my limited experience, they don’t work, and it is pissing me off. In my Roger of Reggio game i am now involved in a crusade against the Shia Caliphate for the Kingdom of Jerusalem, as are like 20 other folks, and i can see that all the other guys are apparently attached. I have a little attach button i can click, and yet no one ever joins me, and no matter how many times i click, i never join anyone else.

The ‘Attach’ button on the army pane would seem to indicate only that you need a “friendly” army to attach to, as when you are alone in a county the button will be greyed out and will tell you there are ‘no friendly units.’ When there are friendly units, the button is not greyed out, but clicking it doesn’t change the button state at all to indicate success. I click it, it stays the same, i get no feedback, and my unit continues to sit where ever it is even when the army i had hoped to attach to wanders away.

I have searched on the Paradox forums, and the web generally, and can find no info on how this is supposed to work, just a couple places on the forums where Paradox agrees that it does not. Without knowing what it is supposed to do, i have no idea if i should be bug reporting or not… So, some questions for the gallery… Continue reading »

I have updated the Ruler Designer page with details on what exactly it does, what exactly it does not, and whom i think may get some use out of it. The short answer is, not you if you are playing a saved game, but yes if you want to start as a heretic for juicy casus belli goodness.

So far today i have mostly finished a Mercenaries page (still need to detail the vassalization process), i have taken screenshots for a Titular Titles page and a Naval Mercenaries page, so expect those soon. I have update Holy Orders to reflect the 1.05 changes and then moved them to a child page of Mercenaries. I have swept the DLC pages to get them up to date with the new releases (see last post for links).

Right now i am going to step away for a bit. I expect to have the Naval Mercenaries and Titular Titles pages up before the end of the day, and maybe some other goodness as well.

Boy Howdy, 1.05 has a lot of changes, both announced and unannounced. It all looks good to me too. I have pages to update all over the place. Holy Orders can now hire mercenary navies to get where they need to be, so that’s an edit… Titular titles will need wrapped into my existing title pages, so there’s another… But hey, patches drive traffic.

I have the next two days off, so i will be pounding away at some updates and new content. I should be able to get an annotated list of the patch changes up later tonight, taxes permitting. Thanks to everyone for stopping by!

UPDATE: I have added annotations to the Patch notes on a My Take page. We’ll see how far off i am…

Sorry. I haven’t added any new topics for a few days now as i have spent my time playing a chunk of time in the D’Hauteville playthrough, and then going back and pulling screenshots and writing about it. This is somewhat counter-productive as very few people care (why would you?) and it doesn’t drive traffic the way the informational pages do.

It DOES however let me learn some of the things that i don’t know yet, as well as give me save points to go back and get screenshots from later on. It gets me closer to the century worth of game i am going to need to check out the Dynamic Kingdoms feature of 1.05. And best of all, it’s a lot more fun to play than it is to write about it…

So, Buster d’Hauteville will have to wait a while. I will get an update out with the last of the 1.05 details sometime today, and then new informational topics for a while. Promise.

Paradox have now released two sets of teaser notes on the upcoming patch 1.05, which is scheduled to be released on April, 17th. Some of the changes included are complete re-workings of the current game mechanics, so prepare yourself for some big changes. I have posted the basics as well as my takeaways in the patch section, but here are the two posts from paradox, so you can get it straight from the horse’s mouth.

Opinions on the forum seem to be 15% cautious and 85% optimistic, and i am certainly happy to see that Paradox continue to work on the title beyond just paid DLC. It’s refreshing to know that they have more that they wish to accomplish and share with the player base. Thanks, gents.

I felt like playing a bit today, so i continued the (thus far successful) adventures of Roger of Reggio, who, after amassing nine counties and no Ducal titles, became King of Sicily without having ever been a Duke. I always love it when a plan comes together. On second thought, i’d rather not have to think about the name Hannibal on during an Italian playthrough.

Along with that, i did put up some basic info on betrothals. I also got some good screenshots today for a matrilineal section which i will get up tomorrow if possible.

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